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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Copyright law poses considerable challenges,
but any barriers to mass digitization of the world's books can — and
should be — overcome.

by Pamela Samuelson, May 1, 2012 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed

"Since 2002, at first in secret and later with great fanfare, Google
has been working to create a digital collection of all the world's
books, a library that it hopes will last forever and make knowledge far
more universally accessible.

But from the beginning, there has
been an obstacle even more daunting than the project's many technical
challenges: copyright law..."

Pamela Samuelson is a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law and faculty director of the law school's Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

“The
media and pop culture provide us with romanticized visions of dorm room ideas
becoming billion dollar IPOs. And indeed, that does happen sometimes, but
startups are more than rags to riches stories. In concise terms:
startups are organizations dedicated to creating something new under conditions
of extreme uncertainty. This sounds exactly like an academic library to me.
Not only are we trying to survive, but we’re also trying to transform our
organizations into a viable service for 21st century scholars and learners.”

“I
want to use breakout sessions at the Assembly because past Assembly evaluations
have asked for more participation by the assembled group. This is an
opportunity for LAUC members on their home campuses to participate in the
Assembly as the event is happening.If
we can't reach a conclusion about all the discussion items suggested by the
Breakout Session on the Future of Librarianship, then at least we can have a
closing arc to the discussions that began at the Berkeley Fall Assembly 2009
and through Irvine Regional Assembly 2010 and Santa Barbara Assembly 2011.

How
do we leverage our training and experience as librarians in order to take
advantage of this new organizational structure?

I'm
concerned that not only do we lose the knowledge base but also the skills are
missing when librarians retire or leave the University of California. We
do not have to resolve these issues at the Assembly, but I have asked the
Committee on Professional Governance to facilitate discussions on the campuses,
the results of which will be added to the final CPG report. We will
continue to use the blog entries for this feedback as well. It is a bit ambitious
to try to have both on-site and remote participation at the Assembly, but
Assemblies may look like more and more like this in the future.”

Mitchell
Brown

LAUC
President 2011/2012

M. Breakout Sessions on what are the next steps
for planning for future librarianship.
The session will follow on the discussion from campuses on librarian attributes
from the Committee on Professional Governance Final Report 2011. Librarians talk about what they want to be
doing/or think they should be doing in the future and more specifically how
they plan on actually doing these activities to support the initiatives of the
UC Libraries and the University. How can
we mobilize the “skills” identified for the next generation of academic
librarians and how do they plan on acquiring these skills? On the job training, mentoring, recruitment,
collaboration with other institutions with specialized knowledge and expertise
[both with and outside of UC]

Librarians talk with next generation
librarians about what they want to be doing/or think they should be doing in
the future and more specifically how they plan on actually doing these
activities to support the initiatives of the UC Libraries and the University.
What “skills” will the next generation of academic librarians need for the 21st
Century and how do they plan on acquiring these skills? On the job training,
mentoring, recruitment, collaboration with other institutions with specialized
knowledge and expertise [both with and outside of UC]

Your group will have 35 minutes to discuss one of the topics
listed below. Each group will have a
designated note taker and a group facilitator.
At the end of the discussion period, each group will then have 3 minutes
to report to the Assembly a brief summary of the group’s discussion and/or highlight
one or two significant points made by the group. The notes as well as a list of participants
will be collected by the facilitator and submitted to both the LAUC Secretary
for the official minutes of the Assembly and to the Committee on Professional Governance
for further analysis.

i.Shared
Service Models

Concrete
suggestions on how to keep pace with ever-increasing user expectations in an
era of shrinking resources and budgets (and maybe personnel).

Collections
& Scholarly Communication

Concrete suggestions for
maximizing the collections of all the UC libraries in the future – which
assumes we will never again have the funding we need – and which assumes
librarians will be making tough choices every day.

ii.Lighting Teams – The New Working Model?

Working with smaller teams with a
smaller project focus for quicker results?

Can we leverage work on different
committees to support planning across the state?

Concrete suggestions for project
team structures, projects, or management styles that worked well (examples)?

iii.Communications Models

To which new groups should UC
libraries be reaching out with communication models – and to what end? What are
the gains broader communication?

iv.Training and New Skills

Give some examples of successful training
initiatives, at your institution or elsewhere. What do they do and how is their
success measured?

OR

What are the advantages of different
training models and to what extent should UC librarians be directing their own
local professional training?

Details for Meeting Discussions

Facilitator:

1.Solicit
participation from all team members

2.Keep
your colleagues at the table focused on task

3.Help
the table to synthesize individual responses into a collective response

4.Shift
conversations away from unproductive tangents back onto main topic(s)

5.Encourage
quieter group members to participate

6.Ask
probing questions as necessary

7.Paraphrase
what people say to make sure you understand their main points

8.Redirect
the group if the discussion goes off‐track

9.Encourage
divergent views

10.Keep
track of time

General Ground Rules for all participants

1.Speak
openly and honestly

2.Listen
carefully to what others have to say

3.Treat
everyone with respect

4.Keep
comments brief and to the point

5.Stay
on task

Note Takers

1.helps
capture and track the key points throughout the discussion

2.assists
in the group prioritization process

3.identifies
each of the top points with some sort of star or similar indicator

The session will run like a webinar, such as the
session from CRL, NISO or WebEx. There is no VOIP option for ReadyTalk so
the audio portion will not be carried through the web connection.
Feedback from the divisions can be shared through chat in the web access or
through the conference call.

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This blog is a collection of posts by LAUC members about topics relating to LAUC, including assemblies and systemwide discussion. This blog does not necessarily represent the views of LAUC or any of its members.